In broadside against China, White House levels criminal charges against Huawei

Andre Damon

US officials announced Monday a series of trumped-up criminal charges against Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications company and second-largest smartphone maker, and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who is currently under house arrest in Canada.

Despite American officials’ invocations of “justice” and the “rule of law,” the charges are pretexts to launch a new economic broadside against China, the world’s most populous country and its second-largest economy, aimed at giving an edge to Huawei’s American and European competitors in the telecommunications infrastructure sector.

The move comes just two days before the US and China are set to begin a new round of trade talks, approximately halfway through a “cooling-off” period before the Trump administration is set to launch a new round of tariffs targeting Chinese goods.

Despite US officials’ claims that the charges against Huawei and the trade negotiations are unrelated, the timing of the announcement makes it clear that the US will enter the negotiations demanding maximal concessions not just on trade, but on military and “national security” issues as well.

While economic growth in the US remains relatively robust, China is facing a protracted economic slowdown that has been intensified by the Trump administration’s economic sanctions.

The Trump administration and American state apparatus have made it clear that their targeting of Huawei, one of China’s most important companies, is the leading edge of a military and economic escalation that the White House has called “strategic competition.”

In a lead article in Sunday’s edition, the New York Times reported: “Over the past year, the United States has embarked on a stealthy, occasionally threatening, global campaign to prevent Huawei and other Chinese firms from participating in the most dramatic remaking of the plumbing that controls the internet since it sputtered into being, in pieces, 35 years ago.”

The article added: “The administration contends that the world is engaged in a new arms race—one that involves technology, rather than conventional weaponry, but poses just as much danger to America’s national security. In an age when the most powerful weapons, short of nuclear arms, are cyber-controlled, whichever country dominates 5G will gain an economic, intelligence and military edge for much of this century.”

It concluded: “In interviews with current and former senior American government officials, intelligence officers and top telecommunications executives, it is clear that the potential of 5G has created a zero-sum calculus in the Trump White House—a conviction that there must be a single winner in this arms race, and the loser must be banished.”

The article unequivocally spelled out the mercenary economic, military, and geostrategic considerations behind the trumped-up charges against Huawei and Meng.

The first set of charges revolves around US accusations that the company violated unilateral US sanctions against doing business with Iran. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen accused “Huawei and its Chief Financial Officer” of breaking “US law” and engaging “in a fraudulent financial scheme that is detrimental to the security of the United States.”

The US, she said, would “not tolerate a regime that supports terrorism,” apparently in reference to China.

On the grounds of these flimsy charges, Meng was effectively kidnapped last month in Canada. US officials formally announced Tuesday that the Justice Department planned to file an extradition request against her.

In a second set of charges, US officials announced 10 counts against Huawei for attempting to steal plans in 2012 for a robot called “Tappy,” from US cellular carrier T-Mobile.

Commenting on the charges, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated that Huawei’s actions “threaten the free and fair global marketplace.” He declared that giving Huawei access to US telecommunications markets “could give a foreign government the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information, conduct undetected espionage, or exert pressure or control.” In fact, it is the US that is using its geopolitical leverage on the world stage to extract economic concessions from China.

The entire campaign against Huawei is part of an effort to secure the economic dominance of companies controlled by the United States and its European allies, including the US-based Qualcomm, the Finnish Nokia and the Swedish Ericsson.

According to media reports, the White House is on the verge of issuing an executive order that would ban US telecommunications companies from buying key infrastructure from Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE. Currently, only US government entities are banned from purchasing such products.

The United States is lobbying its allies, including Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, to restrict purchases of telecommunications equipment from Chinese manufacturers.

The Financial Times warned of “the dramatic deterioration in relations between China and the US.” since the arrest of Meng. The newspaper observed: “Officials across the US government have become significantly more hawkish towards China—over everything from human rights, politics and business to national security.”

The broad and bipartisan shift against engagement with China was summed up in the remarks last week by financier and leading Democratic donor George Soros, who called Chinese President Xi Jinping “the most dangerous opponent of those who believe in the concept of open society.”

He criticized US president Trump for being insufficiently aggressive against China. Soros asserted: “Instead of letting ZTE and Huawei off lightly, [The United States] needs to crack down on them. If these companies came to dominate the 5G market, they would present an unacceptable security risk for the rest of the world. Regrettably, President Trump seems to be following a different course: make concessions to China and declare victory while renewing his attacks on US allies. This is liable to undermine the US policy objective of curbing China’s abuses and excesses.

Other commentators have pointed to the domestic considerations involved in escalating tensions with China, a nuclear-armed power. In an article titled “A common enemy could heal the US partisan divide,” Financial Times columnist Janan Ganesh argued: “For the first time since at least the 1980s, Americans face the kind of economic, ideological and military challenge that can make domestic antagonism seem beside the point, if not unconscionable.”

Like Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks, Ganesh asserted that a conflict with China would serve to unify the country and preserve “internal cohesion.” In other words, a confrontation that could lead to nuclear war would be beneficial for the American ruling elite, from the standpoint of suppressing internal political and class tensions.

Ganesh marveled at the “speed with which Mr Trump’s confrontation with China, so shocking in 2017, has found general acceptance, even enthusiasm, not just in Washington but in business.”

Afghanistan peace talks and the debacle of the war on terror

Bill Van Auken

The Trump administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, on Monday announced the drafting of a “framework” for a peace agreement with the Taliban against which US troops have been fighting for over 17 years.

Khalilzad has a long record in the elaboration and implementation of the criminal US policies that have led to the deaths of millions of Afghans over the past four decades, while turning millions more into refugees.

In 1979, he served as a close aide to Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, in the organization of “Operation Cyclone.” This was the code name for the covert CIA-orchestrated war, which provided billions of dollars’ worth of arms and funding to support the mujahideen, a collection of Islamist militias that would ultimately give rise to both the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in an attempt to topple the Soviet-backed government in Kabul and to draw the USSR into what Brzezinski described as “its own Vietnam.” He continued to work under the Reagan administration to coordinate policy for sustaining this bloody operation.

After a brutal civil war in which the Taliban ultimately established its control over most of the country, Khalilzad signed on as a “consultant” for the energy conglomerate Unocal—now part of Chevron—in negotiating with the Taliban on a deal for a trans-Afghanistan gas pipeline.

In 1996, he wrote a memo insisting that “The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran. We should … be willing to offer recognition and humanitarian assistance and to promote international economic reconstruction,” i.e., promote deals for big oil.

In 2001, he was one of the architects of the illegal October 7 US invasion to overthrow the Taliban, carried out in the name of avenging the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. In the final analysis, the invasion of Afghanistan, like the criminal war on Iraq begun in 2003 was not about terrorism, but rather US military dominance over two major oil- and gas-producing regions on the planet, the Caspian Basin and the Middle East.

Khalilzad, a reliable steward of these interests, was named in December 2001 as US envoy to Afghanistan. Serving as an imperialist proconsul, he worked in Kabul to solidify the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai, a former associate of his at Unocal.

That Khalilzad is hardly a reliable apostle of peace goes without saying. Whether the talks he has supervised with a senior Taliban delegation in Qatar result in the withdrawal of the 14,000 US troops in Afghanistan—along with that of 8,000 troops from a number of other countries—remains to be seen.

What is unquestionable, however, is that his announcement signals a shift in US militarist and geostrategic policy that is bound up with the debacle of the more than 17-year-long “war on terrorism” and the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan—by far America’s longest war—as well as a shift toward preparation for military confrontation with nuclear-armed China, Russia and other “great powers.”

The outline of the “framework” discussed in Qatar reportedly involves an 18-month drawdown of US forces in exchange for a guarantee by the Taliban that it will prevent the country from “becoming a platform for international terrorist groups,” Khalilzad said.

Such a demand could with even greater justification be made of Washington, which utilized Al Qaeda-linked militias as proxy forces in its wars for regime change in Libya and Syria, and, according to some accounts, has not been averse to promoting the activities of ISIS in Afghanistan as a counterweight to the Taliban.

A senior official cited by the New York Times reported that the US position is that the withdrawal of US troops would take place only after the Taliban entered into talks with the US-backed government in Kabul and agreed to a cease-fire.

The Taliban’s leadership has in the past rejected such negotiations with the US-backed regime, seeing it as a puppet of foreign occupation, a view that is confirmed by Khalilzad’s holding the talks in Qatar behind the backs of the corrupt cabal in Kabul.

What have over 17 years of direct US intervention in Afghanistan wrought? According to conservative estimates, 175,000 have died outright as a result of the war, while with inclusion of indirect deaths, the figure is probably closer to one million. Millions more have been driven from their homes.

The war has unfolded as an unending series of atrocities, from the massacre of 800 Taliban prisoners in November 2001, through to the savage escalation in US bombing under the Trump administration, with US warplanes and drones unleashing nearly 6,000 munitions on targets in Afghanistan in the first 10 months of last year alone.

The toll has also included the deaths of nearly 2,300 US military personnel along with 1,100 other foreign troops and large numbers of private contractors. The wounded and maimed are at least ten times that number. Many more have been left with PTSD as a result of their service in a dirty colonial war, with the suicide rate among US veterans reaching a level of 20 a day.

As for the material cost, the Afghanistan war has drained, by conservative estimates, over $1 trillion from resources to meet the vital social needs of the US population, from jobs and decent living standards to education and health care.

The “war on terror,” initiated with the invasion of Afghanistan, was used as the pretext for a frontal assault on democratic rights, including the passage of the 2001 Patriot Act, the proliferation of unchecked spying, the “extraordinary rendition,” indefinite detention, torture and military tribunals associated with Guantanamo and CIA black cites, along with the militarization of police agencies and the persecution of Muslims and immigrants. Governments around the world have followed the US example, all of them preparing, like Washington itself, for a confrontation with their most dangerous enemy, the working class.

A war launched with the aim of asserting US domination of an oil-rich region in order to reverse US imperialism’s decline by military means has achieved nothing of its original aims. The two-headed monstrosity that constitutes the Afghan government, among the most corrupt in the world, is hated and isolated, with the Taliban controlling more territory than at any time since 2001.

As for the strategic oil and gas reserves of Central Asia, they have only become increasingly dominated by Russia and China.

While there can be little doubt that US imperialism will attempt to continue exerting its influence in Afghanistan, whether by aerial bombardment, the retention of strategic bases like the one at Bagram or the deployment of private mercenaries, the discussions about a troop pullout are bound up with a shift in US strategy toward military confrontation with Russia and China.

This was spelled out in the “National Security Strategy” document unveiled by the Trump administration a little over a year ago, making “great power competition” and countering so-called “revisionist states,” i.e., Russia and China, the new axis of US global strategy, supplanting the so-called “war on terror.”

There exists within the US ruling establishment no constituency opposed to the drive toward a new world war. On the contrary, to the extent that opposition exists within the Democratic Party and the military and intelligence apparatus whose views it reflects, it is based upon the wholly reactionary narrative of Trump’s supposed “collusion” with Russia and failure to prosecute with sufficient force the ongoing US wars, particularly in Syria and Afghanistan. Indeed, in an editorial column published Monday by the Washington Post, hostility to Khalilzad’s negotiations with the Taliban was based on the charge that the war would be ended “on the enemy’s terms,” betraying the “political order they [US forces] have spent 17 years defending, at enormous cost.” That this rotten “political order” rests solely on foreign bayonets is left unmentioned.

The only means of putting an end to US imperialism’s “endless wars” and preventing the outbreak of a global cataclysm lies in the growth of the class struggle in the US and internationally. The conditions are rapidly emerging for the development of a mass political movement of the working class, in opposition to imperialist war and its cause, the capitalist system.

British Institute in East Africa Graduate Attachment Scheme 2019/2020 – Nairobi

Application Deadline: 25^th February 2019

Eligible Countries: African countries


About the Award: BIEA graduate attachments offer recent graduates, with an interest in further studies in Africa, the opportunity to gain practical experience of research. The June 2019 to May 2020 BIEA graduate attachment scheme will take up to nine successful applicants.  Graduate attachés will be involved in three types of work while at the BIEA:

• Attachés will develop specific research interests in the region, gain practical experience of conducting fieldwork, meet a variety of active researchers, and take part in a number of innovative historical, archaeological and anthropological projects throughout eastern Africa;
• Assisting with the administration of the BIEA including website, library, reading groups focused on key texts in African studies, workshops and seminars; and,
• Doing their own research usually leading into developing a plan for a Masters or PhD. Their attachment involves the presentation of a paper in the BIEA Completion Seminar Series upon some aspect of the research they have carried out during their time at BIEA.

Type: Job/Internship

Eligibility:

• You will need a strong academic record, some experience of studying/researching Africa, and a clear interest in developing your own research.
• You should also be able to show significant initiative and that you are equally adept at working and living alone or as part of a large team.
• You should be ready to offer enthusiastic assistance for various field projects and subsequent data analysis. 

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• Graduate attachés will be given a total allowance of £1600.00 for the three months of the attachment to pay for accommodation, food, daily transport in Nairobi and medicine.
• The attachés will have to provide receipts for their expenses amounting to their total allowance (small food purchases can be written down weekly in a receipt book/ledger).
• The total costs for transport to and from Nairobi at beginning and end of an attaché’s stay will be paid separately on a needs basis.
• Graduate attachés will not be obliged to use the offered BIEA accommodation, but will be given preferential access to the dorm rooms, should they wish to use the BIEA guest house.
• The BIEA has free weekly Swahili lessons, at beginner, intermediate and advanced level that graduate attachés can join.

Duration of Programme: 

• Graduate attachments are three months long. There may be opportunities to extend your stay but accommodation, food, visa and transport changes will be at the attaché’s own expense.
• Graduate attachés can arrive between 1 July 2019 and 1 January 2020. The scheme for this year will finish on 31 March 2020. 
• Please specify the three-month time period(s) that you are available for this scheme in your application.

How to Apply: Applicants should send a CV and Cover Letter to gas@biea.ac.uk explaining how participation in the scheme will assist the development of your career. You will need to arrange for two academic references to be sent directly to BIEA.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying.

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Zimbabwe’s Capitalist Crisis: Finance Minister a ‘Fraud’ and ‘Political Moron,’ as Army Represses Protests

Patrick Bond

Once again, a formidable burst of state brutality against Zimbabwe’s citizenry has left at least a dozen corpses, scores of serious injuries, mass arrests, internet suspension and a furious citizenry. The January 14-17 nationwide protests were called by trade unions against an unprecedented fuel price hike, leading to repression reminiscent of former leader Robert Mugabe’s iron fist.

Most of the country’s economy ground to a halt. For more than a week, the cities remained ghost towns, as army troops continued attacking even ordinary civilians who are desperate to earn a living in what often seems to be the country’s main occupation these days: street vending of cheap imported commodities. A national strike of 500,000 civil service workers has been called. Most essential commodities are now vastly overpriced or in very short supply. This is what a full-on capitalist crisis looks like.

The stresses are obvious within elite politics, for as ever in Harare, rumors of political upheaval abound. But whatever happens to the ruling party’s leadership, a more brutal fiscal policy plus an even tighter state squeeze on hard currency appear to be the new constants. The stubbornness of President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s leadership is partly due to the ideological fervor of his finance minister, Mthuli Ncube, an academic economist with a dubious practical track record and fast-fading international credibility (as CNN interviewers now openly laugh at answers to questions). Ncube argues that Zimbabwe’s problems boil down to loan repayment arrears to international creditors, a high state budget deficit and a trade deficit.

In addition to ultra-neoliberal macroeconomics, Mnangagwa depends on Vice President Constantino Chiwenga’s renewed authoritarian tendencies. The country’s crony-capitalist system is being shaken by its own contradictions, even more profoundly than in the darkest days: before Rhodesian colonizers finally gave up power in 1980, when the Third World debt crisis hit hard in 1984, when deindustrialization began with a ‘homegrown’ (i.e. World Bank-transmitted) structural adjustment program in 1991, when foreign debt defaults began in 1998, in the lead up to several hotly-contested elections (especially 2000, 2002, 2005 and 2008), and when the local currency crashed to its death in 2009.

Post-coup, return of the ‘IMF Riot’

The protest was sparked by a 150% overnight price increase in petrol announced on Saturday, January 12. At $3.31/litre, this makes it the world’s most expensive retail fuel, with Hong Kong second at $2.05/litre. The next day, Mnangagwa and a plane-load of colleagues departed for Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in search of mineral investors, energy deals and what the president called Moscow’s “state of the art” (albeit unaffordable) military equipment. Indeed, Mnangagwa was meant to continue to Davos for the World Economic Forum, but was persuaded that the country – and his own leadership – were in peril, so instead headed home.

Mnangagwa’s first tweet after arriving back in Harare was in defence of the fuel price hike, “not a decision we took lightly. But it was the right thing to do. What followed was regrettable and tragic.” He promised to look into army and police thuggery, but hopes for a reckoning are vain, since his own background is littered with the country’s most extreme post-liberation repression (he managed the 1980s ‘Gukhurahundi’ massacres of more than 20,000 Ndebele people), and since his own spokesman (inherited from Mugabe) told the press that the recent army attacks – which included numerous rapes – were “a foretaste of things to come.”

At this writing, army repression continues and leading activists remain behind bars, including five members of parliament. The term that veteran Zimbabwean social justice activist Elinor Sisulu uses to describe Mnangagwa’s dictatorial tendencies, ‘Mugabesque,’ is now very hard to refute, in spite of Ncube’s surreal whitewash attempts in Davos last week.

Recall that Mugabe had run Zimbabwe since 1980, after leading the armed liberation struggle against the white racist Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith. Twenty years on, he was threatened with probable electoral defeat. So his belated, urgent and chaotic land reform – against a few thousand mainly-reactionary white settlers who for a century had controlled nearly all Zimbabwe’s good farmland – gained him permanent hatred from the Western establishment. Though land redistribution was justifiably popular in some circles, Mnangagwa last year admitted that the acquisitions had “robbed the country of its breadbasket status,” given how much of the staple maize needed to be imported (even while tobacco production hit record highs). As a result, land acquisition was “now a thing of the past,” the new president promised.

Riddled with corruption and dictatorial tendencies, Mugabe’s ruling party – the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) – had meanwhile become widely hated in the cities, which were mainly governed by the liberal opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), whose constituents gave Mnangagwa’s 2017 coup their immediate, joyful approval. But the celebration was brief and the hangover long, for MDC founding leader Morgan Tsvangirai died of cancer early last year and the mid-2018 national election witnessed Mnangagwa victory’s, one that his MDC successor, Nelson Chamisa, considered to be rigged.

Mnangagwa came to power in November 2017, assisted by then army commander Chiwenga, after a relatively non-violent (and then very popular) week-long coup against Mugabe, one relabelled a ‘military-assisted transition’ by opportunistic diplomats in order to avoid the legal consequences. Although Mugabe was often abused by Chiwenga and Mnangagwa in prior years, according to his private secretary, the ‘father of the nation’ was useful to the junta, and he was compelled to remain in office by Chiwenga after losing the first round of the 2008 election to Tsvangirai in lieu of turning over power to the MDC.

From the plotters’ standpoint, the crucial mistake made by the 93-year old leader in late 2017 was the excessively rapid elevation of his (four-decade younger) wife Grace Mugabe. She was briefly considered to be his likely successor once she managed to get Mnangagwa fired as vice president a week prior to the coup. The Mugabes now live in politically-uncomfortable and apparently careless luxury, akin to house arrest, despising the coup-makers (and endorsing last year’s electoral opponent) but also under their thumb.

The 2017 coup relied on Chiwenga’s Joint Operation Command, an army junta which was already controlling much of Zimbabwe behind the scenes, partly funded by diamond mining arranged through Chinese mining joint ventures. Given how erratic Mugabe had become, how his policies discouraged investment, and how he turned against the Chinese firms allied with Chiwenga in 2016 due to their prolific diamond looting, former allies in Beijing welcomed the change in power. Pretoria-Johannesburg elites and Western powers – especially Britain – were also upbeat.

However, aside from adopting much more pro-business rhetoric and initially liberalizing politics to an unprecedented degree, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga didn’t lose their taste for repression. According to the progressive coalition known as Crisis in Zimbabwe, the last week has witnessed “Mass trials, fast-tracked trials, routine denial of bail, routine dismissal of preliminary applications, refusal of access to medical treatment and trial and detention of juveniles.” For nearly a week, disconnections of social media and the internet were also added to the toolbox, until a January 21 court order catalysed by human rights lawyers reversed the state’s ether-clampdown.

In Davos last week, Ncube defended the Chiwenga’s internet disconnection as just “a temporary and tactical strategy to try to manage the situation… managing insurrection, and managing information and dissemination.” Speaking to CNN, he bizarrely blamed last week’s protests on a ‘pre-planned’ conspiracy and not his petrol price hike: “these are the facts.” Anger at the petrol price was “added on.” And he defended army intervention: “What you saw in the streets is actually a sign that the government is open. Democratic spaces are open.”

Two leading opposition politicians were scathing. Welshman Ncube (no relation) called him a ‘political moron’ for these remarks, and former MDC finance minister Tendai Biti (from 2009-13) labels Ncube a ‘fraud.’ As if to prove it, in another interview Ncube said of his Davos trip, “Things are going well. The theme is Globalization 4.0. It resonates with what Zimbabwe’s trying to do in terms of global financial reengagement, raising capital, pushing our mantra that Zimbabwe’s open for business. It really resonates. Zimbabwe is the best buy in Africa.”

Under Ncube, much more explicitly neoliberal, anti-poor fiscal and monetary policies prevail, with no end in sight. The new regime has been unable to make structural changes to an impoverished economy dependent upon primary-resource exports in a time of still-low world commodity prices. Since last September, when Ncube was appointed, budget cutbacks and desperation currency manipulation have logically followed.

The society knows this feeling of despondency. It appears often as a so-called ‘IMF Riot’ – i.e., when people revolt immediately after a neoliberal shock (sometimes ordered by the International Monetary Fund) such as overnight removal of food or petrol subsidies. Zimbabwe’s prior IMF Riots were caused by severe shocks in 1998 when the currency fell 74% in four hours and in 1999 when Mugabe felt the need to default on foreign debt. In 2005-06 when Mugabe authorized repayment of $200 million worth of IMF loans, the Reserve Bank officials gathered up all the hard currency they could find on the black market, sparking a wicked upsurge of inflation and another set of IMF Riots.

As for the class character of last week’s anger, two progressive researchers from the Institute for Public Affairs in Zimbabwe – Tamuka Chirimambowa and Tinashe Chimedza – explain, “the protests were intense in specific geographies associated with the urban poor and the ‘barely’ working class is a direct consequence of the existing political economy that is systemically unequal. The riotous protests were found and concentrated South of Samora Machel Avenue, contrasted to the affluent suburbs North of Samora Machel (Harare North), which enjoyed a peaceful stay-away. In Bulawayo, they were concentrated in the Western suburbs, in Mutare and Masvingo in the Southern Suburbs. The elite hob-knobbed on social media or their usual social spaces with very limited threats to their security and their only major outcry was the closure of shops and the internet shutdown.”

The protests were predictable enough, and Mnangagwa and Ncube imposed the petrol price hike and immediately left town. Scheduled meetings with Vladimir Putin, leaders of three other repressive Eastern European and Central Asian countries, and the World Economic Forum took precedent.

Ncube’s vain arrears ambitions: pay, won’t pay or can’t pay – and can’t get new loans

Zimbabwe’s notorious shortage of hard currency was the proximate cause of the fuel price hike, followed by rapid price increases in anything requiring transport, including the staple maize. In turn, this squeeze reflects the priorities of a new finance minister, the academic economist Ncube, who is considered the most neoliberal in modern Zimbabwe’s history. Exhibiting a sometimes startling self-confidence, and entirely comfortable within the circuits of world elites, Ncube is smooth and at first blush, persuasive.

But his three most spectacular prior mistakes were, first, founding and chairing the Harare Barbican Bank, which launched in mid-2003 but then “failed to meet obligations” to the country’s clearance system within seven months, leading to expulsion. Two months later it was declared insolvent, as its regulator at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe explained, due to “serious liquidity problems as a result of imprudent banking behavior… [including] questionable cross-border foreign exchange activities which are yet to be cleared to the satisfaction of all parties.”

A second mistake was serving well into 2018 as a top official at corruption-riddled financier Quantum Global, which ripped off Angola’s citizenry during his tenure there.

Third, as chief economist at the (Western-dominated) African Development Bank (AfDB) in 2011 at the height of ‘Africa Rising’ hype, he declared the existence of a new ‘African middle class’ of more than 330 million people: “Hey you know what, the world please wake up, this is a phenomenon in Africa that we’ve not spent a lot of time thinking about.” Oddly, Ncube included in the ‘middle class’ category people who barely survive on $2-4/day, a group of more than 200 million.

His smooth, optimistic talk notwithstanding, Ncube’s finance minister role since last September has been rocky. Interviewed last December 3 by Richard Quest on CNN, Ncube argued that the most serious economic problem he believes the country faces is foreign debt repayment arrears of $5.6 billion, most of which date back twenty years. The arrears include $1.3 billion owed to the World Bank, $680 million to the AfDB, $308 million to the European Investment Bank, $2.8 billion to the Paris Club and at least $500 million to non-Western lenders and firms, especially the Chinese state and South African corporations. Said Ncube, “The budget recognizes that we have a twin deficit challenge, which is that we have a fiscal deficit as well as a current account deficit. But also we need to deal with our debt arrears in terms of debt restructuring. So two things that are confounded or rather magnified by the arrears.”

Ncube then promoted his homegrown structural adjustment programme, the Transition Stabilization Programme, bragging that International Financial Institutions (IFIs) just gave the plan a warm endorsement: “We’ve sold it internationally. And then we’re willing to move to the next step which is to clear the debt arrears with the AfDB and the World Bank, which is what you call the preferred creditor IFIs. We’re determined in the next 12 months that is done, and then we move on the second, the third phase, which is the Paris Club negotiations with the bilateral creditors.”

Finally, he offered this extraordinary claim: “Zimbabwe is indeed the biggest buy in Africa right now on any asset. You talk about the rule of law. Let me tell you, this is about property rights at the end day. Property rights are secure in Zimbabwe… Clearly Zimbabwe is the biggest buy in Africa right now.” Ncube then tweeted proudly about this ‘biggest buy’ status, a claim he just repeated in Davos.

But the gap between Zimbabwe’s local ‘soft’ currency (a combination of a local ‘Bond Note’ bill and electronic payments) and the main currency used in Zimbabwe since 2009, the US dollar, has remained in the range of 3.5-4 times, even though they are pegged as equal. Inflation soared to 42% in December, what with a black market raging and only $400 million of paper US$s circulating in the banking system. Due to the physical shortage of US notes, for more than a year, day-long waits in bank queues to withdraw $20 has been the norm. Ncube has promised to introduce a proper local currency within a year, but claims he must first clear arrears and end deficit spending so as to restore confidence.

Yet with a stiff upper lip, Ncube appeared in Davos at the World Economic Forum last week, announcing to CNN his intention to continue upping the economic pressure, including not just more fiscal discipline: “Externally, making sure we can begin to address our arrears in terms of what we owe to other nations, the Bretton Woods Institutions included. But fiscal discipline is key and if you noticed what has been happening since October 2018 the premiums in the parallel market have stabilized and this is because of fiscal discipline.”

Ncube utterly overstates budget cutbacks as a solution to all problems. Asked by Bloomberg about roaring inflation, he offered a simplistic, incorrect cause-and-solution: “It’s being driven by the parallel market in terms of pricing… that’s what has pushed up the prices, people speculating… What we’re doing about it is to just make sure that on the fiscal front we continue to make sure there is fiscal discipline, cutting back on government expenditure.”

Ncube’s no-gain-without-pain logic, in one of the most abused societies in Africa, failed to win Zimbabweans’ confidence. He erred last October when establishing Foreign Currency Accounts within the predatory banking system, in the process wiping out large amounts of savings, which devalued by two-thirds to black-market rates. Instead, he could have taken a predecessor’s advice: Biti advocated ring-fencing the bank accounts against their devaluation.

Last month, complained Biti, for the first time in modern Zimbabwe history, a finance minister prioritized a New York trip instead of debating his budget as scheduled in parliament. In a prior parliamentary appearance last October, Biti asked Ncube, “You seem to suggest that you are going to find money to clear the arrears and my question is, what country is going to give you the almost US$2 billion that you would require to pay off the arrears… you are going to try and clear the arrears that Zimbabwe has at the World Bank and AfDB. I am saying given the quantum of that debt, and given the fragility of our own situation now, which country is prepared to lend us the money that Zimbabwe has to use to clear?”

In spite of Ncube’s regular assurances of new credit lines based on his stellar Rolodex of banking contacts, he answered nebulously: “On the issue of debt clearance and which countries are going to help us, at the stage of clearing the AfDB and World Bank balances… of course we will negotiate with the various countries who are shareholders in those institutions and of course the Paris Club countries. We will negotiate with them, the G7, there are other members of European Union and in Europe who are willing to talk to us about this. We have had a conversation with them already, so we will continue to explore with them as to whether they can give us relief, but there are countries that we are speaking to.”

But no details are ever forthcoming on the promised bailout.

The Shame of the One Percent Continues

Mel Gurtov

Speaking at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sir David Attenborough called on government and business leaders to support, with practical plans, “United Nations decisions on climate change, sustainable
development, and a new deal for nature.”

“What we do now, and in the next few years, will profoundly affect the next few thousand years,” he said. True enough, but politically speaking, Sir David probably knows as well as anyone that precious few in his audience will be motivated to act decisively in the human interest—no more so than at any previous Davos meeting.

At this very moment, in fact, Oxfam published its latest data on global wealth distribution. It’s another sad rendition of an old theme: the rich are getting richer, the poor poorer. Notwithstanding China’s remarkable poverty reduction, the rest of the world’s poor are getting a decreasing share of the economic pie. As a result, Oxfam reports, “the 26 richest billionaires own as many assets as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of the planet’s population.” In 2016 it took 61 billionaires to match the wealth
of the world’s 50 percent in poverty, and 43 billionaires in 2017.

For the world’s 2,200 billionaires, wealth rose an astounding $2.5 billion a day in 2018. These people—the global one percent—typically take in
27 cents on every dollar of global income growth, compared with 12 cents on the dollar for the global 50 percent. It doesn’t take much imagination to
understand the real-world consequences of those figures—for example, that “about 10,000 people per day die for lack of healthcare and there were 262 million children not in school, often because their parents were unable to afford the fees, uniforms or textbooks,” according to Oxfam.”

As we in the US celebrate Martin Luther King Day, we might consider what a single decision by those Davos participants would mean: a one percent tax on the one percent, which today would raise about $418 billion, enough to meet those health and education needs just mentioned. Think they’ll do that, in between glasses of Champagne?

National Awards: Ethics of Conferment and Politics of Selection

K M Seethi 

As expected, the announcement of the national awards for 2019 again brought forth a storm of controversy in India. This time it has drawn special attention due to the fiddly criteria used for selection. However, politics of awards is as old as the constitutional history of India. Saffronisation of awards is also a part of this history of ‘give and take.’

Politics of the selection of ‘Bharat Ratna’ has a history that goes back to the 1950s. Inevitably, debates and controversies followed. It is generally assumed that the Modi Government has done it what the previous Congress governments also did it, over decades. Many also believed that Jawaharlal Nehru, as Prime Minister, should not have accepted ‘Bharat Ratna’ in principle, while being in office in 1955.  Whether it was announced by President Rajendra Prasad by himself or whether it was done by violating the ‘rules’ already put in place a year ago, the process had set a bad precedent. Ironically, Rajendra Prasad himself received it (in 1962) when Nehru was the Prime Minister. The procedure of awarding the Bharat Ratna is apparently simple. The Prime Minister put across the names to the President of India, who, in turn, accepts nominations. There is hardly any specific regulation in place on the matter and it is more or less treated as a convention and not the law of the land.

However, in July 1955, the Rashtrapati Bhavan witnessed a dramatic scene in a banquet hosted by President Rajendra Prasad. While announcing the conferment of Bharat Ratna on Nehru dramatically, the President was reported to have confessed that he had “acted unconstitutionally” insofar as  he decided “to confer the honour without any recommendation or advice from my Prime Minister or the Cabinet” (Times of India, 16 July 1955; see also Laliwala 2018).  Many raised their eyebrows even at that stage whether persons holding (or having held) the position of Head of State or Head of Government should be a ‘natural’ choice for conferring such civilian honours/awards.

Other prime ministers like Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, Rajiv Gandhi, and Vajpayee also received. Former Presidents/Vice Presidents like S. Radhakrishnan, V.V. Giri, A. P. J. Kalam also come in line.  Pranab Mukherjee’s choice in 2019 is obviously a part of this history of ‘self-help.’ Mukherjee was his ‘Master’s Voice’ in different ways. He was not only a silent spectator under the Modi dispensation, but a part of many crucial decisions. The invitation to RSS headquarters was not quite unexpected.  Nanaji Deshmukh was a straight choice for BJP without any pretensions of ‘bias.’ Bhupen Hazarika was ‘honoured’ for his hobnobbing with Sangh Parivar towards the end of his career.

Article 18 of the Constitution of India stipulates that (1) No title, not being a military or academic distinction, shall be conferred by the State; (2) No citizen of India shall accept any title from any foreign State; (3) No person who is not a citizen of India shall, while he holds any office of profit or trust under the State, accept without the consent of the President any title from any foreign State; (4) No person holding any office of profit or trust under the State shall, without the consent of the President, accept any present, emolument, or office of any kind from or under any foreign State (India, Ministry of Law and Justice  2018: 26).

Even as the Government of India started instituting Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri, a major question was raised whether such “Titles” come within the purview of Article 18  of the Constitution of India. During 1960-70, Acharya J.B. Kripalani had moved a non-official bill for the abolition of such titles. He argued that although Article 18 had abolished titles, they “were sought to be brought in by the back door in the form of decorations; the decorations were not always awarded according to merit, and the Government of the day is not the best Judge of the merits or the eminence of the recipient; and these “new titles” were at first given to very few, exceptional persons; this small stream had since become quite a flood” (The Supreme Court of India 1995).  Though the bill generated heated debates in the Lok Sabha, it was eventually defeated. The following year, however, saw Indira Gandhi being chosen for the Bharat Ratna!  During the Janata Government, the institution of the national awards was cancelled through a notification. This was again revived in 1980. Ironically, the persons responsible for cancelling such titles during the Janata regime were given Bharat Ratna subsequently—Morarji Desai (1991) and AB Vaypaee (2015).

Interestingly, even some members of the Advisory Committee on Fundamental Rights in the Constituent Assembly had expressed reservations about dispensing with titles.  C. Rajagopalachari (who became the last Governor-General of India) put a suggestion across, during the debates, that it should be left open to the legislature to determine whether titles are good or bad. He was reported to have said that “if there was a nationalist, communist or socialist policy, and the profit motive was removed, there would be a great necessity for creating a new motive in the form of titles” (Supreme Court of India 1995). Alladi Krishnaswamy Aiyar, M. Ruthnaswamy et al. also supported such a position. K.T. Shah and a few others argued that “the conferring of titles offended against the fundamental principle of equality sought to be enshrined in the Constitution.”Ironically, C. Rajagopalachari himself became the first recipient of Bharat Ratna in 1954 (along with the then Vice President S. Radhakrishnan and CV Raman). Interestingly, Vallabhbhai Patel said that “such titles were often being abused for corrupting the public life of the country and, therefore, it was better that their abolition should be provided as a fundamental right” (Ibid). Again, it would appear like an irony of history that Patel was chosen for Bharat Ratna in 1991, along with Desai and Rajiv Gandhi.

However, in 1995 the Supreme Court said (in Balaji Raghavan/S.P. Anand vs Union of India case) that “the National Awards are not violative of the principles of equality as guaranteed by the provisions of the Constitution” and endorsed the system of awards etc “to recognise excellence” in the performance of certain duties enshrined in the Constitution itself (Ibid). Yet, controversies and litigations continued. For example, nomination of Subhash Chandra Bose, former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister MG Ramachandran et al. created sensational news, litigations and discussions. Bose’s nomination itself was cancelled by the apex court in 1997.  While the controversies surrounding Bharat Ratna continued over years, the other awards (such as Padma Vibhushan, Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri) also generated similar arguments and heated squabbles.

Distribution of honours/awards etc is part of an exercise in legitimising authority and its inherent ideological mission. It happens everywhere, in all systems, in one way or other. It is a process of (not necessarily recognizing) coopting certain sections/people for ideological and social justification of the regime in place. Decades back, ‘political development’ theorists had argued that the ‘survival’ of the political systems depends on certain ‘capabilities’ and these ‘capabilities’ can even be used as yardsticks for classifying and characterizing political systems as ‘democratic’/‘authoritarian’/‘developed’/ ‘underdeveloped’/‘transitional’ etc. These capabilities include ‘extractive’, ‘regulative’, ‘distributive’, ‘symbolic’, and ‘responsive’ categories (Almond and Powell 1966/1972:190-212).If we employ these categories for judging the effectiveness of the Modi regime, I would say, it has high propensity to use ‘regulative’, ‘distributive’ and ‘symbolic’ capabilities and sustains very low propensity to exercise ‘extractive’ and ‘responsive’ capabilities. While ‘regulative’ capability has something to do with securitization of society by way of threats, persuasions and force (both legally and illegally), the other two capabilities have been employed to ‘distribute’ the spoils of the system like positions, power, honours and awards, on the one hand, and to transmit ‘symbols’ of the regime through displays, parades and show off, on the other. Many authoritarian systems are like this under the façade of democracy. However, Modi knows very well that his political future does not begin with (nor does it come to a terminal point of) such ‘distribution’ capability. If the system has had high capability of distributing goods and wealth of the country on a platform of egalitarianism (rather than distributing offices and honours) he would have been a wonderful ruler. The Oxfam Reports, however, point to the fact that the ‘neoliberal raj’ has not at all helped India reimagine itself as an ‘emerging power’ in the world. In its latest Annual Report released at World Economic Forum, Oxfam said that India’s wealthiest 1 per cent got wealthier by 39 per cent as against the bottom half of the population whose wealth increased by mere 3 per cent over the last year, accelerating the divide between the rich and the poor (Oxfam 2019). Obviously, the ‘distributive capability’ of the NDA dispensation is inherently at odds which is also fraught with lopsided paths of both governance and development.

The Maduro government: why illegitimate?

Pasqualina Curcio

Have those who claim that Nicolas Maduro is a dictator, a usurper and that the 2019-2025 period lacks legitimacy asked themselves this question? Or do they just repeat what they hear?

It was the 12 countries gathered in Lima that began to position this opinion matrix. Their communiqué reads: “…the electoral process carried out in Venezuela on May 20, 2018 lacks legitimacy because it did not include the participation of all Venezuelan political actors, nor the presence of independent international observers, nor the necessary international guarantees and standards for a free, fair and transparent process.”

The leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, we refer to the non-democratic one, tirelessly repeat, and of course without arguments, that Maduro is a usurper.

In an act of desperation, the Vice President of the United States himself, Mike Pence, when forced to personally call out the opposition march for January 23, due to the incompetence of the opposition leadership, insisted and repeated that President Nicolas Maduro is a usurper and illegitimate dictator.

The strategy is clear: to repeat the lie a thousand times in order to turn it into truth.

Let us dismantle the lie:

1. There were presidential elections. They were held on May 20, 2018, that is, before January 10, 2019, when, according to articles 230 and 231 of the Constitution, the presidential term 2013-2019 expires. It would have been a violation of the Constitution if the elections had been held after January 10, 2019, or worse still if they had not been held.
2. It was the Venezuelan opposition that asked for the elections to be brought forward. They were held in May and not in December, as was traditionally the case, because it was the opposition that requested it, within the framework of the dialogue in the Dominican Republic, that took place in the first trimester of 2018.
3. In Venezuela, voting is a right, not a duty. Those who freely decided, although influenced by some non-democratic political organizations that called for abstention, not to go to the polls, are in their full right, but in no way does this make the electoral process illegitimate, even less so when that would imply ignoring and disrespecting the 9,389,056 who decided to vote and democratically exercised their right to suffrage.
4. Sixteen political parties participated in the electoral contest: PSUV, MSV, Tupamaro, UPV, Podemos, PPT, ORA, MPAC, MEP, PCV, AP, MAS, Copei, Esperanza por el Cambio, UPP89. In Venezuela, it is not mandatory for all political parties to participate in electoral processes. They have the full right to decide whether or not to participate. Precisely because our system is democratic. The fact that three parties (AD, VP and PJ) freely decided not to participate does not make the electoral process illegitimate.
5. Six candidates contended for the presidency: Nicolás Maduro, Henri Falcón, Javier Bertucci, Reinaldo Quijada, Francisco Visconti Osorio and Luis Alejandro Ratti (the last two decided to withdraw).
6. Maduro won by a wide margin, obtaining 6,248,864 votes, 67.84%; followed by Henri Falcón with 1,927,958, 20.93%; Javier Bertucci with 1,015,895, 10.82% and Reinaldo Quijada who obtained 36,246 votes, 0.39% of the total. The difference between Maduro and Falcón was 46.91 percentage points.
7. Around 150 people accompanied the electoral process, including 14 electoral commissions from 8 countries; 2 technical electoral missions; 18 journalists from different parts of the world; 1 MEP and 1 technical-electoral delegation from the Russian Electoral Centre.
8. The elections were held using the same electoral system used in the December 2015 parliamentary elections, in which the Venezuelan opposition won. This system is automated and audited before, during and after the elections. This system guarantees the principles of “one elector, one vote” because only with a fingerprint is the voting machine unlocked; it also guarantees the “secrecy of the vote”.
9. Eighteen audits of the automated system were carried out. The representatives of the candidate Henri Falcón participated in all [the] 18 [audits] and signed the acts in which they [expressed] their conformity with the electoral system. The audits are public and televised live on the channel of the National Electoral Council. Once the audits have been carried out, the system is blocked and the only way to access it again is with the simultaneous introduction of the secret codes that each political organization holds.
10. None of the candidates who participated in the electoral process contested the results. There is no evidence of fraud, they did not present any evidence or concrete denunciation of fraud.

The presidential elections of May 20, 2018 were free, transparent, reliable, secure and in accordance with the Constitution and the laws despite the anti-democratic call for abstention on the part of one sector of the opposition.

It is others who seek to usurp the office of President of the Republic with the argument of a supposed power vacuum, a figure that is not contemplated in our Constitution and the establishment of a “transitional government”, a figure also not contemplated in the Magna Carta. And as if that were not enough, they intend to exercise power outside our borders in violation of Article 18 of the Constitution, which establishes that Caracas is the seat of public power.

Things being as they are, the usurpers, those who are illegitimate and anti-democratic, are others. It is illegitimate and constitutes an attempted usurpation that some sectors of the opposition are trying to sustain themselves with the support of foreign actors coming from imperialist governments to exercise an authority that neither the people nor the Constitution gives them.

Let us repeat these truths a thousand times.

New Zealand doctors to hold second nationwide strike

Tom Peters

More than 3,300 junior doctors in public hospitals across New Zealand will strike for 48-hours starting tomorrow, in the second two-day nationwide strike this month in opposition to major attacks on working conditions. The Resident Doctors Association (RDA) last week confirmed that its members had also voted for a third strike on February 12-13.

The country’s 20 District Health Boards (DHBs) are now seeking to extend the number of consecutive days that doctors can be rostered to work from 10 to 12. DHBs also want the power to force doctors to work shifts longer than 16 hours and to relocate anywhere in the country.

Health workers are attempting to fight back against the drastic under-funding of the public health system. The doctors’ strikes follow a nationwide strike by over 30,000 nurses and healthcare assistants last year and industrial action by ambulance paramedics, over low wages and unsafe staffing levels. Some 1,100 hospital-based midwives are preparing a series of 12-hour strikes in mid-February, after also striking last year.

New Zealand workers have joined an international resurgence of working class struggles against austerity. About 700,000 teachers and government employees in Tamil Nadu are on strike following a general strike in India. In France, tens of thousands of “yellow vest” workers are continuing to protest against the government’s pro-business policies. In Matamoros, Mexico, 70,000 factory workers have organised independently of the corporatist unions to carry out the largest strike in North America in more than 20 years.

New Zealand Health Minister David Clark and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern have remained silent on the doctors’ strikes, with Ministry officials saying the dispute is a matter for DHBs and the RDA. DHB staffing budgets, however, are determined by government funding. The Labour Party-led government’s pledges in the 2017 election to properly fund the health system have proven to be a fraud: its health budget has failed to keep pace with population growth and the needs of the ageing population.

Thousands of people have been unable to access medical care, with hospitals overflowing with patients, and severely understaffed. Health workers’ wages have been virtually frozen relative to the cost of living. On January 18 the New Zealand Herald reported that Clark “has warned district health boards to tighten their belts,” i.e., make further spending cuts, to reduce their deficits.

Doctors are stretched to breaking point, frequently working shifts as long as 15 hours, which inevitably puts patients at risk. One doctor, Moayed, wrote on the RDA’s Facebook page: “We are exposed to complex patients and complex needs... [and] traumatic events. We are stressed as we have exams, deadlines, clinical workload, meeting DHBs targets, our family needs and personal needs. Safe rostering isn’t a luxury. It is a necessity! It is a basic condition for all employees.”

Other workers have spoken out in support of doctors. A student nurse who also works part-time at Wellington Hospital told the World Socialist Web Site that doctors worked extremely hard: “I see some are there when I show up to work and are still there after I leave. They’re working the same amount as nurses and some work more consecutive days. If the [DHBs] want more people to work hours they should just hire more people.”

She said hospital staff were under stress because “there’s not enough hands to do everything. A lot of people I work with talk about how hard their job is and how tired they can be. Some nurses who show up day after day look so tired.”

A hospital cleaner employed by the contract company Spotless Services said: “I wish the doctors the best of luck. We don’t want them too tired and run down; they might make a mistake. It’s a health and safety issue.”

He said about a dozen hospital cleaning jobs had been cut in recent years to reduce costs. He believed the Labour-led government was “the lesser of two evils,” but funding for healthcare had not increased enough. He added that orderlies were paid less than $20 an hour and were prepared to strike if they do not get a meaningful pay rise this year.

The trade union bureaucracy is working to isolate the strike and ensure doctors are defeated. Fairfax Media reported on January 23 that Council of Trade Unions leader Richard Wagstaff said doctors had “the right” to take industrial action but “stopped short of standing in solidarity” with them.

The Public Service Association (PSA), New Zealand’s largest union, actively sought to undermine doctors’ conditions by helping to establish the Specialty Trainees of New Zealand (STONZ), a rival union to the RDA, with about 100 doctor members.

Last November STONZ agreed to the DHBs’ clawbacks. In an email leaked to the media, PSA national secretary Erin Polaczuk attacked the RDA for refusing to affiliate to the CTU.

The RDA itself does not represent any alternative for workers. Like the PSA and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO), the junior doctors’ union is led by a privileged bureaucracy which, while opposing the sellout deal accepted by STONZ, has pledged to enforce the existing intolerable working conditions in hospitals and is ready to sacrifice even more. A statement on the RDA’s Facebook page on January 25 said that in last-minute talks with DHBs “we withdrew almost all our claims, [and] offered changes to the safer hours provision to allow more flexible rostering.” These concessions were not enough to reach a deal.

The RDA agrees with the meagre pay offer of 3 percent per annum—which barely keeps place with official inflation and is below the real increase in housing, fuel and other living costs. The same pay offer was repeatedly rejected by nurses last year, only to be pushed through in a rotten deal by the NZNO.

Doctors and other health workers must draw the lessons from the NZNO’s sellout, which maintained low wages and dangerously understaffed wards. To wage a real fight against austerity, health workers must overcome the division and isolation imposed by the unions by rebelling against these pro-capitalist organisations and forming new committees of action controlled by workers themselves. These committees must unite workers in hospitals, schools, transport and other workers on the basis of a socialist program for the complete reorganisation of society, in accordance with human need.

Workers should decisively reject the Labour government’s lie, echoed by the NZNO, that there is not enough money to solve the healthcare crisis. The billions of dollars in the hands of the super-rich must be redistributed to properly fund health and other essential services. Thousands of doctors and nurses must be hired immediately, on high wages, to reduce the working day to eight hours and improve conditions for patients.